Bitcoin ETF not viable until underlying markets are cleaned up, says SEC chair
Digital currency prices shot higher on Wednesday, with most major coins recording double-digital gains.
Bitcoin, BTCUSD, +0.85% the No. 1 digital currency, was trading at $4,370.30, up 15% since Tuesday at 5 p.m. Eastern Time on the Kraken exchange and on track for its best day in four months.
After a rough November so far, bitcoin found some support over the past 48 hours and is attempting to carve out a base around the $3,500-$4,000 level.
“It is worth paying attention to the market behavior near $3,500. This is an area that saw drastic increase back in September 2017, so technical analysis urges us to track the price dynamics near these levels,” wrote Alexander Kuptsikevich, markets analyst at FX Pro Insights.
What’s in the news
On Tuesday, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton said a bitcoin-backed exchange-traded fund wouldn’t be approved until nefarious behavior, including manipulation, is cleaned up in the underlying markets that trade cryptocurrencies.
“Those kinds of safeguards do not exist currently in all of the exchange venues where digital currencies trade,” Clayton said, speaking at the Consensus Invest conference in New York.
Altcoins and futures move higher
Altcoins — the collection of cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin — moved higher with bitcoin on Wednesday. Ether ETHUSD, -2.83% was up 14.8% at $124.76, Litecoin LTCUSD, -1.54% was up 15.8% at $35.37, XRP XRPUSD, -3.80% had gained 10.9% to 40 cents, and Bitcoin Cash BCHUSD, -5.81% was up 12.8% to $197.40.
The broad-based rally added $20 billion to the market value of all cryptocurrencies, which was last at $142 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
Bitcoin futures marched higher on Wednesday too. The Cboe Global Markets December contract XBTZ8, +0.47% finished the session up 15.1% at $4,240 while the CME Group November contract BTCX8, -0.35% closed up 15.6% at $4,300.
